Thursday, April 21, 2011

After spending two weekends working/at the hospital I decided it was time to head out and so last weekend was spent at Tokeh beach. It was nice to have a real break from work and from Freetown.

We did have an interesting time getting to Tokeh. First of all 'cleaning Saturday' caused a bit of a delay. For the past month or so the government has enforced a cleaning morning every Saturday to make sure the city is clean for Independence. This means that from 6 am to noon no one is supposed to be out and about- you either need to be cleaning your compound or cleaning the streets. Well, we headed out at 11 am (because previous Saturdays cleaning always finished by about 10) but there were no taxis. We decided to walk down to Freetown supermarket on Wilkinson road - about a 25 minute walk. We would meet up with the rest of the group there and do some shopping for the weekend. We reached there by half 11 and met one security guard and a locked shop. So we waited. By 12 the shop opened and friends arrived. We then slowly headed towards Lumley to pick up more people and off to Tokeh we went. We were able to use a taxi from Tokeh which was great except for the fact that the door kept falling off. Oh Salone. At least no one fell out.

The beach was lovely. Surprisingly, although there was an evening/night outing (with loudish music), it seemed very peaceful. To be honest, it was still less noisy than my neighborhood. We had loads of fun. The guys took their drinks into the ocean and tried to tackle the waves without any spillage. They later had a sword fight with burning sticks from the fire. Boys will be boys and for once we were outnumbered - 5 guys and 3 girls!

I slept terribly- on the hard sand but it was amazing to wake up to the sound of the ocean and the cool breeze. After a fabulous breakfast we walked to River 2 and swam in the river. After catching up with some friends at River 2 we headed back to our campsite and by early afternoon we packed up and drove to Franco's for a seafood lunch before heading back to Freetown. It was a successful weekend and I must remember to go camping more often!